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One of the most contentious questions in contemporary literary
studies is whether there can ever be a science of literature that
can lay claim to objectivity and universality, for example by
concentrating on philological criticism, by appealing to cognitive
science, or by exposing the underlying media of literary
communication. The present collection of essays seeks to open up
this discussion by posing the question's historical and systematic
double: has there been a science of literature, i.e. a mode of
presentation and practice of reference in science that owes its
coherence to the discourse of literature? Detailed analyses of
scientific, literary and philosophical texts show that from the
late 18th to the late 19th century science and literature were
bound to one another through an intricate web of mutual dependence
and distinct yet incalculable difference. The Science of Literature
suggests that this legacy continues to shape the relation between
literary and scientific discourses inside and outside of academia.
The genealogy and function of epigenesis--the theory that organisms
generate themselves under the guidance of a formative
drive--provides a unique means of understanding the profound
changes in philosophy, philosophy of language, and literature at
the turn of the nineteenth century.
The book begins by describing how and why epigenesis came to
replace the reigning model of biological origination,
preformation--the theory that all organisms were preformed at the
creation of the world. Contemporary with these developments, Kant
used the figures of epigenesis and self-formation to illustrate his
concepts of the origin of the categories, the possible success of
practical reason, and the validity of aesthetic and teleological
judgments. The author shows how Kant's figurative use of
self-generation was turned into an indispensable determination by
Fichte and his successors: philosophical knowledge can claim
absolute certainty only if it can prove that it generates itself in
logically accountable procedures.
This self-generating philosophy--also known as Idealism--was in
turn accompanied by a revaluation of the origin of language,
notably by Herder and by Humboldt, who attempted to formulate
self-generation as the philosophical foundation for a future
Science of Language. The book concludes by demonstrating that the
biological, philosophical, and linguistic problematic of
self-generation is at the heart of Goethe's novel "Elective
Affinities" and Beaumarchais's "The Marriage of Figaro."
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On Tarrying (Paperback)
Joseph Vogl; Translated by Helmut Muller-Sievers
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R365
Discovery Miles 3 650
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Western culture has been marked by deep divisions between action
and contemplation, intervention and passivity, and decisiveness and
withdrawal. Conceived as radical opposites, these terms structure
the history of religion, philosophy, and political theory, and have
left their imprint on the most intimate processes of individual
decision-making and geo-political strategies. But, in On Tarrying,
Joseph Vogl argues for a third way, a mode of thought that doesn't
insist on these divisive either/ors. Neither an active refusal to
engage with the world nor a consistent strategy of resistance,
tarrying, as defined by Vogl, defers, multiplies, and suspends the
strictures of decision-making. In his far-ranging reflections Vogl
shows that the traditional insistence on the exclusivity of these
terms impoverishes and distorts the range of human responses to a
world full of possibilities. His readings of texts by Freud,
Sophocles, Friedrich Schiller, Robert Musil, and Franz Kafka
provide rich examples of how to resist the binary of activity and
passivity through tarrying. This important book offers the
first-ever extended analysis of tarrying as a mode of subversion
and presents provocative new readings and interpretations of
significant works of German literature and thought.
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St. Matthew Passion (Hardcover)
Hans Blumenberg; Translated by Helmut Muller-Sievers, Paul Fleming
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R1,047
Discovery Miles 10 470
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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St. Matthew Passion is Hans Blumenberg's sustained and devastating
meditation on Jesus's anguished cry on the cross, "My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?" Why did this abandonment happen, what
does it mean within the logic of the Gospels, how have believers
and nonbelievers understood it, and how does it live on in art?
With rare philological acuity and vast historical learning,
Blumenberg unfolds context upon context in which this cry has
reverberated, from early Christian apologetics and heretics to
twentieth-century literature and philosophy. Blumenberg's guide
through this unending story of divine abandonment is Johann
Sebastian Bach's monumental Matthauspassion, the parabolic mirror
that bundled eighteen hundred years of reflection on the fate of
the crucified and the only available medium that allows us
post-Christian listeners to feel the anguish of those who witnessed
the events of the Passion. With interspersed references to writers
such as Goethe, Rilke, Kafka, Freud, and Benjamin, Blumenberg
gathers evidence to raise the singular question that, in his view,
Christian theology has not been able to answer: How can an
omnipotent God be so offended by his creatures that he must
sacrifice and abandon his own Son?
"The Cylinder" investigates the surprising proliferation of
cylindrical objects in the nineteenth century, such as steam
engines, phonographs, panoramas, rotary printing presses, silos,
safety locks, and many more. Examining this phenomenon through the
lens of kinematics, the science of forcing motion, Helmut
Muller-Sievers provides a new view of the history of mechanics and
of the culture of the industrial revolution, including its
literature that focuses on the metaphysics and aesthetics of
motion. Muller-Sievers explores how nineteenth-century prose falls
in with the specific rhythm of cylindrical machinery, re-imagines
the curvature of cylindrical spaces, and conjoins narrative
progress and reflection in a single stylistic motion. Illuminating
the intersection of engineering, culture, and literature, he argues
for a concept of culture that includes an epoch's relation to the
motion of its machines.
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